Amy Dowden opens up about her battle with Crohn's disease
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The inflammation caused by Crohn’s disease can induce uncomfortable symptoms, ranging from pain to malnutrition. This inflammation can spread to deeper layers of your bowel. The condition can also lead to life-threatening problems in some cases. Research has found a type of food which can increase your risk of dying from Crohn’s by a staggering 95 percent.
The food boosting the risk of dying from the inflammatory condition is processed meat.
There’s nothing surprising about the negative effects of this processed food on our health.
The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified this type of meat as a carcinogen – cancer-causing – many years ago.
However, the new research, by professor Jie Chen from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China and colleagues, has reported processed meat to increase the risk of death, especially for patients suffering from Crohn’s disease.
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The evidence suggests that eating this meat can boost the risk by as much as 95 percent.
The researchers found that this risk was especially high among those who ate processed meat more than four times a week.
Meat, including unprocessed red meat, chicken, or fish, wasn’t associated with a greater risk of death, according to the professor.
The researchers explained that meat consumption was previously thought to contribute to the development of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
However, the risk of death from all causes linked to eating meat in patients with IBD hasn’t been researched until now.
IBD describes both Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
The new research looked at 5,763 patients with IBD from the UK Biobank.
The data was collected by a dietary information questionnaire given to the participants.
The study participants were around the age of 57, with 53 percent of them being women and the rest men.
During the study, 590 patients died. The research team then concluded processed meat to be a major risk factor for increasing death from all causes when suffering from IBD.
What is processed meat and what other risks does it pose?
Processed meat is such that has been altered in some way in order to preserve or flavour it.
This process can include anything from salting and curing to smoking.
In terms of groceries, processed meat describes items, such as bacon, sausages, ham, deli meat and more.
Apart from cancer, this type of food has also been linked to causing heart disease and diabetes.
Now, the new research has established a further risk factor posed by processed meat for Crohn’s disease patients.
Chen and co-authors of the study concluded: “We recommend a re-modified diet with restricting processed meat as well as supplying an additional healthy diet for IBD patients, using alone or in combination with pharmacotherapy.”
Pharmacotherapy details the treatment of health conditions by using pharmaceutical products like medication.
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